Franco Fagioli
Franco Maximiliano Fagioli (born May 4 1981, in San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán) is an Argentine operatic countertenor. Life Born in Argentina, Fagioli initially studied piano and then singing at the Superior Art Institute of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. He began his international career in 2003, when he won the Bertelsmann singing competition Neue Stimmen in Gütersloh, Germany. Franco Fagioli has since made regular appearances at opera houses in Buenos Aires, Karlsruhe, Bonn, Zurich, Essen and Genoa, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna and the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. He has also been invited to perform at a number of festivals, including those in Halle, Ludwigsburg, Innsbruck and Froville. He has worked with conductors such as Rinaldo Alessandrini, Alan Curtis, Gabriel Garrido, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, René Jacobs, José Manuel Quintana, Marc Minkowski, Riccardo Muti and Christophe Rousset. Franco Fagioli is one of the five countertenors to appear ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Artaserse (Vinci)
''Artaserse'' is an opera (''dramma per musica'') in three acts composed by Leonardo Vinci to an Italian libretto by Pietro Metastasio. This was the first of many musical settings of Metastasio's libretto Artaserse. Vinci and Metastasio were known to have collaborated closely for the world premiere of the opera in Rome. This was the last opera Vinci composed before his death, and also considered to be his masterpiece. It is known among Baroque opera enthusiasts for its florid vocal lines and taxing tessituras. It premiered during the carnival season on 4 February 1730 at the Teatro delle Dame in Rome. As women were banned from the opera stage in Rome in the 18th century, all the female roles in the original production were taken up by castrati. However, subsequent 18th-century productions outside Rome included women in the cast. ''Artaserse'' continued to be popular for a while after Vinci's death, but has since faded into obscurity. The first modern revival of ''Artaserse'' was ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leonardo Leo
Leonardo Leo (5 August 1694 – 31 October 1744), more correctly Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore de Leo, was a Baroque music, Baroque composer. Biography Leo was born in San Vito degli Schiavoni (currently known as San Vito dei Normanni, province of Brindisi) in the Apulia region, then part of the Kingdom of Naples. He became a student at the Music conservatories of Naples#Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini, Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini at Naples in 1703, and was a pupil first of Francesco Provenzale and later of Nicola Fago. It has been supposed that he was a pupil of Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni, Pitoni and Alessandro Scarlatti, but he could not possibly have studied with either of these composers, although he was undoubtedly influenced by their compositions. His earliest known work was a sacred drama, ''L'infedeltà abbattuta'', performed by his fellow-students in 1712. In 1714 he produced, at the court theatre, an opera, ''Pisistrato'', which was much admired. He hel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Caffarelli (castrato)
Gaetano Majorano (12 April 1710 – 31 January 1783) was an Italian castrato and opera singer, who performed under the stage name Caffarelli. Like Farinelli, Caffarelli was a student of Nicola Porpora. Early life and training Caffarelli was born Gaetano Carmine Francesco Paolo Majorano to Vito Majorano and Anna Fornella in Bitonto. His early life is uncertain. His stage name, Caffarelli, is said to be taken from an early teacher Caffaro who taught him music in childhood, others say it was taken from a patron, Domenico Caffaro. There is evidence that he personally desired to be castrated. When aged ten, he was given the income from two vineyards owned by his grandmother, according to the legal document, so that he could study grammar and, especially, music: "to which he is said to have a great inclination, desiring to have himself castrated and become a eunuch". He became the pupil of Nicola Porpora. According to legend, Porpora kept the young Caffarelli working from one sheet ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carus Verlag
Carus-Verlag is a German music publisher founded in 1972 and based in Stuttgart. Carus was founded by choral conductor Günter Graulich and his wife Waltraud with an emphasis on choral repertoire. the catalogue includes more than 26,000 works. The company produces the standard editions of the complete works of Josef Rheinberger and Max Reger.''Harald Wanger, Rheinberger-Archivar, Organist, Pädagoge'' Harald Wanger, Franz-Georg Rössler, Robert Allgäuer - 2003 p. 48 Carus-Verlag, Musikalische Schätze abseits bekannter Pfade - Harald Wanger und der Carus-Verlag "Für den Carus-Verlag ist die Verbindung zu Harald Wanger und dem Josef Rheinberger-Archiv ein Glücksfall." Record label The company also produces CDs to accompany some of its printed editions. Currently the publishers are working on recordings accompanying the complete editions of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. Opera rarities include Schubert's '' Sakuntala'' and Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg (10 Januar ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gustav Kuhn
Gustav Kuhn (born 28 August 1945) is an Austrian conductor and manager, also a composer, and a teacher and author. During his international conducting career, he founded the later "Accademia di Montegral" for young musicians and singers in 1987, held the artistic directorship of the , which he founded, for over 20 years and was artistic director of the international singing competition "Neue Stimmen" of the Bertelsmann Foundation since the competition was founded in 1987. Due to the accusations against Kuhn, he ended the collaboration in September 2018. Life Born in Predlitz-Turrach, Turrach, Styria and raised in Salzburg, Kuhn received violin and piano lessons as a child and studied conducting at the conservatories of Vienna and Salzburg with Gerhard Wimberger, Hans Swarowsky, Bruno Maderna and Herbert von Karajan. In 1970, he was awarded the ''Lilli Lehmann Medal'' at the Mozarteum University Salzburg. He was awarded a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Salzburg. At t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Antonio Caldara
Antonio Caldara ( – 28 December 1736) was an Italian Baroque composer. Life Caldara was born in Venice (exact date unknown), the son of a violinist. He became a chorister at St Mark's in Venice, where he learned several instruments, probably under the instruction of Giovanni Legrenzi. In 1699 he relocated to Mantua, where he became '' maestro di cappella'' to the inept Charles IV, Duke of Mantua, a pensionary of France with a French wife, who took the French side in the War of the Spanish Succession. Caldara removed from Mantua in 1707, after the French were expelled from Italy, then moved on to Barcelona as chamber composer to Charles III, the pretender to the Spanish throne (following the death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 without any direct heir) and who kept a royal court at Barcelona. There, he wrote some operas that are the first Italian operas performed in Spain. He moved on to Rome, becoming ''maestro di cappella'' to Francesco Maria Marescotti Ruspoli, 1st Pr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Siroe
''Siroe, re di Persia'' ('' Siroes, King of Persia'', HWV 24), is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. It was his 12th opera for the Royal Academy of Music and was written for the sopranos Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. The opera uses an Italian-language libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym, after Metastasio's '' Siroe''. Like many of Metastasio's libretti, it was also set by Handel's contemporaries, e.g. by Leonardo Vinci, Antonio Vivaldi and Johann Adolph Hasse (see Hasse's ''Siroe''). Pasquale Errichelli's setting of the libretto (see Errichelli's ''Siroe'') premiered in the year of Handel's death. The story of the opera is a fictionalisation of some events in the life of Kavad II (also known as Shērōē), King of the Sasanian Empire in 628 AD. Performance history The opera was first given under the direction of the composer at the King's Theatre in London on 17 February 1728 and it was also seen in Braunschweig, Germany. It was rediscovered an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nicola Porpora
Nicola (or Niccolò) Antonio Giacinto Porpora (17 August 16863 March 1768) was an Italian composer and teacher of singing of the Baroque era, whose most famous singing students were the castrati Farinelli and Caffarelli. Other students included composers Johann Adolph Hasse, Matteo Capranica and Joseph Haydn. Biography Porpora was born in Naples, Italy. He graduated from the music conservatory Poveri di Gesù Cristo of his native city, where the civic opera scene was dominated by Alessandro Scarlatti. Porpora's first opera, ''Agrippina'', was successfully performed at the Neapolitan court in 1708. His second, ''Berenice'', was performed at Rome. In a long career, he followed these up by many further operas, supported as ''maestro di cappella'' in the households of aristocratic patrons, such as the commander of military forces at Naples, prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, or of the Portuguese ambassador at Rome, for composing operas alone did not yet make a viable career. Howe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and with the Royal Opera House, itself known as "Covent Garden". The district is divided by the main thoroughfare of Long Acre, north of which is given over to independent shops centred on Neal's Yard and Seven Dials, while the south contains the central square with its street performers and most of the historical buildings, theatres and entertainment facilities, including the London Transport Museum and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The area was fields until briefly settled in the 7th century when it became the heart of the Anglo-Saxon trading town of Lundenwic, then abandoned at the end of the 9th century after which it returned to fields. By 1200 part of it had been walled off by the Abbot of Westminster Abbey for use as arabl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Idomeneo
(Italian for ''Idomeneus, King of Crete, or, Ilia and Idamante''; usually referred to simply as ''Idomeneo'', Köchel catalogue, K. 366) is an Italian-language opera seria by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, based on a 1705 play by Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon , Crébillion père, which had been set to music by André Campra as ''Idoménée'' in 1712. Mozart and Varesco were commissioned in 1780 by Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria for a court carnival. He probably chose the subject, though it may have been Mozart. The work premiered on 29 January 1781 at the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich, Germany. Composition The libretto clearly draws inspiration from Metastasio in its overall layout, the type of character development, and the highly poetic language used in the various numbers and the ''secco'' and ''stromentato'' recitatives. The style of the choruses, marches, a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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La Clemenza Di Tito
(''The Clemency of Titus''), K. 621, is an ''opera seria'' in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Caterino Mazzolà, after Pietro Metastasio. Mozart completed the work in the midst of composing ''Die Zauberflöte'', his last opera. ''La clemenza di Tito'' premiered on 6 September 1791 at the Estates Theatre in Prague. Background In 1791, the last year of his life, Mozart was already well advanced in writing ' by July when he was asked to compose an ''opera seria ''Opera seria'' (; plural: ''opere serie''; usually called ''dramma per musica'' or ''melodramma serio'') is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to abou ...''. The commission came from the impresario Domenico Guardasoni, who lived in Prague and who had been charged by the Estates of Bohemia with providing a new work to celebrate the coronation of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, as King o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |